Master's degrees in accounting, finance and other disciplines — generally aimed at students just out of college and lasting one year — “have found tremendous popularity in recent years among Chinese nationals seeking a competitive edge and U.S. experience,” the newspaper reports.

At the University of California, Davis, for instance, roughly two-thirds of the 189 applications last fall for a new master's program in accounting came from Chinese citizens.

“Such demand has provided steady revenues for business schools at a time when traditional MBA programs are losing their appeal among U.S. students,” The Journal reports.

Like companies, business schools "have to change with the times and go where the market is," Anurag Gupta, chairman of the banking and finance department at Weatherhead, tells The Journal.

The newspaper notes that “more than 85% of applicants to Weatherhead's current finance master's program came from China, and more than 80% of the 58-student class is Chinese.” The school launched a version of the program in Shanghai a few years ago “to balance diversity in the Cleveland program and earn money abroad,” according to The Journal.

The trend is not likely to abate anytime soon.

“Nearly 60,000 Chinese citizens took the Graduate Management Admission Test in the 2011-2012 testing year, about triple the number in 2007-2008,” the newspaper reports. “In the latest year, 78% of those score reports were sent to U.S. programs, while 64% went to specialized master's degrees worldwide.”

Questioning cozy relationships

The New York Timesreports that private consultants and federal regulators “are facing a fresh round of scrutiny in Washington” — led by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Avon — after “botching a broad review of foreclosures and failing to thwart financial misdeeds.”

A new report by the Government Accountability Office will take aim at the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency “for creating a bureaucratic maze that delayed relief to homeowners in foreclosure,” according to a draft of the 74-page document provided to The Times. The regulators, the report found, “designed a flawed review of troubled loans that the consultants carried out and mishandled.”

The newspaper says the Senate Banking Committee “plans to hold a hearing next week to examine the foreclosure review and other recent missteps at consulting firms like Promontory Financial and Deloitte & Touche.”

Sen. Brown, who is leading the inquiry, “is expected to broadly question the quality and independence of consulting firms that are paid billions of dollars by the same banks they are expected to police,” The Times reports.

The hearing is set for April 11. Sen. Brown's office also is expected to invite executives from Promontory and Deloitte to testify, according to the newspaper.

How loyal are you?

If you like using the self-checkouts at Giant Eagle stores — and who doesn't? — you need to play by some new rules.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazettereports that the grocery chain has made the self-checkout stations off limits to shoppers who aren't using the chain's loyalty card, called the Giant Eagle Advantage Card.

“The company isn't blaming concerns about theft for the new policy, but some industry observers say that could be a factor as the grocer — like many other retailers — tinkers with its use of the technology that swept the industry over the past decade,” the newspaper reports.

In a statement, Giant Eagle said, “Scanning a Giant Eagle Advantage Card ensures that customers receive all available weekly specials, fuelperks!, personalized register coupon offers and other savings, while also making available vital customer contact information in the instance of a product recall.”

The statement added that for people who don't have one of the grocer's loyalty cards, "a store team member will be happy to assist with the checkout process."

Picking up the pace

There were 21 U.S. law firm mergers and acquisitions in the first quarter of 2013 — the highest number since the first quarter of 2009, according to data from Altman Weil MergerLine.

The largest deal announced in the first quarter came at the end of March with the merger of Clark Hill, a 231-lawyer law firm headquartered in Detroit, and Thorp Reed & Armstrong, an 82-lawyer firm based in Pittsburgh. Another Detroit-based firm, 282-lawyer Dickinson Wright, announced its acquisition of 60-lawyer Phoenix firm, Mariscal Weeks McIntyre & Friedlander, in January.

“It appears that Detroit-based firms are expanding opportunistically into new markets with greater potential,” Altman Weil principal Ward Bower said in a statement. “This is a strategy that has been employed successfully in the past by firms based in cities with limited local growth options, like Cleveland and Pittsburgh.”

The other 19 deals announced in January, February and March were acquisitions of small law firms with fewer than 25 lawyers.

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